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Commentary: Anti-GMO crusader changes mind -- why?

By Andrew Staehelin

Posted:
01/27/2013 01:00:00 AM MST

The anti-GMO movement was born in the mid 1990s. Mark Lynas, author and environmentalist was one of the founders of that movement, but now he has changed his mind and supports the planting of GM crops.

Mark Lynas became one of the leaders of the anti-GMO movement by providing important ideological arguments against he use of GM crops. However, in a fascinating presentation to the 2013 Oxford Farming Conference he explained the thinking and the evidence that has led him to change his mind. His speech can be downloaded from the conference website.

Lynas' transformation came when, after critically reading the peer-reviewed, scientific literature, he found that his previous, ideology-based opposition to GM crops was untenable. In his words, "one by one my cherished beliefs about GM turned out to be little more than green urban myths." Here are some quotes: "I'd assumed that GM was dangerous. It turned out that it was safer and more precise than conventional breeding using mutagenesis. For example, GM just moves a couple of genes, whereas conventional breeding mucks about with the entire genome in a trial and error way." "I assumed that GM benefited only the big companies. It turned out that billions of dollars of benefits were accruing to farmers needing fewer inputs."

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The central challenge facing mankind is how are we going to feed 9.5 million people by 2050. This growth in population is due not to high fertility but to declining infant mortality in the developing world. During the past 50 years the human population has more than doubled, but the large famines predicted by Paul Ehrlich in 1968 have not materialized because farming productivity has increased 300 percent thanks to the green revolution. In recent years, however, crop yield growth has stagnated due to anti GM crop lobbying.

During the Great Potato Famine in Ireland approximately 1 million people died and approximately 1 million people emigrated. This famine was caused by a potato disease known as blight, which requires up to 15 applications of fungicides per season to control in rainy countries. Breeding for blight resistance has been difficult, slow and only partly effective. Irish scientists have now identified a resistance gene that is effective against most known strains of blight and have produced blight-resistant GM-potatoes. However, distribution of these potatoes to farmers has been blocked by the anti-GMO lobby.

In Asia, where rice is the staple food for 2 billion people, a deficiency in dietary vitamin A is responsible for 500,000 cases of child blindness per year. To combat this problem a combination of European university and International Rice Institute scientists have created a rice variety, Golden Rice, which produces vitamin A precursors. A recent study in China has shown that this rice is as effective in preventing child blindness as traditional rice supplemented with pharmaceutical grade vitamin A. As soon as the results of the study became known, Greenpeace publicly vilified the scientists that performed the experiment, causing authorities to terminate their employment, further delaying the release of this life-saving rice to farmers in China.

Scientists are now developing third generation GM crops, while the anti-GM crusaders still focus on first generation GM crops. Last year, researchers described two novel ways for producing pest-resistant crop plants. The first involves aphids, which cause significant losses to wheat farmers in Europe. These pests warn each other of an imminent attack by their natural predators (ladybugs) by releasing volatile chemical signals. The aphid gene that produces this volatile molecule has been transferred to leaf and stem cells of wheat, causing the aphids to flee these plants. In another example, herbivorous insects cause major losses, both by destroying photosynthetic leaves and by transmitting devastating viruses. Defense compounds in wild type tomatoes make them more resistant to such insects than cultivated tomatoes. By transferring genes for enzymes that make these molecules to the gland cells of commercial tomatoes, the plants have been made insect resistant.

Lynas concluded his lecture by stating that "farmers should be free to choose what kind of technologies they want to adopt" and that the anti-GM lobby should let them "get on with feeding the world sustainably."

Andrew Staehelin is a professor emeritus of the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

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